Word on the virtual street is that Patch 3.3 is dropping next Tuesday. Among all the other stuff (new LFG, quest tracker, faster rep gains, BoA head & shoulder enchants) here’s the summary of what you rogues can expect.

I detailed the rogue class changes in an earlier post, but here’s a refresher…

Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Deadly Poison to your target by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)

Deadly Poison now has an additional effect – Once stacked to 5 times, each application of Deadly Poison also causes the poison on the Rogue’s other weapon to apply.

Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.

Also,

Dual Wield: Rogues now know this ability upon logging into the game at level 1.

Stealth: This ability no longer has multiple ranks. While active, the single rank of this ability (available at level 1) allows rogues to move at 70% movement speed.

Starting weapons are now more uniform. Rogues now start with a pair of daggers equipped

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OK, now lets look at the loot that drops. (This would be better if I could have the items show in a popup on mouseovers, but wordpress.com won’t allow javascript, so you’ll have to click through to see the items)

First, there is a new 5-man instance opening, Frozen Halls. It has 3 wings with 7 bosses, so its big for a 5-man. On normal mode is drops iLvL 219 loot, which is comparable to Ulduar 10. In heroic mode it drops iLvL 232 loot, which is what you would get from Ulduar 10 hardmodes or from ToC 10.

Second boss in the Forge of Souls is called The Devourer of Souls. From this encounter on normal mode you can get a new iLvL 219 dagger, Heartshiver. On heroic mode, you are hoping for a better dagger, Blood Weeper, or the Frayed Scoundrel’s Cap as a new head slot item (that maybe doesn’t look like a ghoul’s head). Also available is the trinket, one of the most elusive gear drops, called Needle-Encrusted Scorpion.

Once you have cleared the Pit of Saron you’ll move on to the third and final wing, the Halls of Reflection. Your first boss encounter there is Falric. We haven’t seen any sword drops until now, but on normal node you can claim a 2.6 speed sword (finally! a sword!), Ghoulslicer. On heroic mode he can give the Spaulders of Black Betrayal (cool name).

After Falric, you’ll get to his friend Marwyn. On normal mode Marwyn can drop a hand slot item, the Carpal Tunnelers (funny name!). On heroic mode, you can get the Choking Hauberk, a chest slot item.

When you get past Marwyn, you’re up to the last boss in Frozen Halls. That’s right, its Arthas himself! OK, you don’t actually fight him here, but I’ll leave the details of the encounter for another time. In any case, there’s some good loot to be had. On normal mode there is an axe (Hate-Forged Cleaver) a bow (Crypt Fiend Slayer) and a chest slot item (Blackened Geist Ribs) that sounds like a recipe. On heroic mode, the iLvL 232 loot includes a mace (Black Icicle) a 1.5 speed sword (Liar’s Tongue) or some boots (Blighted Leather Footpads).

No fist weapon drops? Have no fear. There is a trash drop on heroic mode for an iLvL 232 Seven Fingered Claws. There is also yet a dagger drop from trash on heroic mode, the 1.4 speed Unsharpened Ice Razor.

If you’ve done any significant raiding lately, most of these will not be big upgrades, if they are upgrades at all. Some may be sidegrades that are itemized in ways that you prefer over your previous gear, so make sure to use your dps spreadsheet to evaluate your gear.

I’ll do a separate post later on some of the 10/25 man raid gear. Right now the loot lists are incomplete, so we’ll need to wait for some runs to get through the available parts before being sure what is there. And I’ll also work on rogue strategy guides as soon as I get a chance to taste these fights myself.

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8 Responses to “Rogue Gear from the 5-man instance in Patch 3.3”

Looking at the gear, and assuming you’d probably want to shoot for the 4 pc T10, it looks like it’s going to be tough for mutilate rogues to get anywhere near the expertise cap.

From the Tier Gear:

Head – No expertise
Shoulders – No expertise
Chest – No expertise
Hands – No expertise
Legs – 80 expertise for the 10 man, 92 for the 25

Assuming you’re running 10 mans, that leaves 214-80 = 134 expertise you need to get to the cap

Belts will not help you, unless you stick with the ilvl 226 Twilight Assassin belt, or you have the Yogg hard-mode belt, but that’s still only 232 gear.

You can get the crafted boots, if you’ve got the scratch, and that’ll get you another 64, but they won’t be cheap at all, especially not any time soon, since they’ll require primordial saronite, which will certainly be a hot commodity.

The best wrists with expertise come from Algalon 25, so let’s not worry about them. Wrists don’t help either.

There are no expertise rings above Ulduar gear.

Your necklace won’t help either.

There IS a cloak in 10 man IC that could help. This could be our saving grace. 56 expertise on the Shawl of Nerubian Silk.

And you can get 28 from the emblem of triumph thrown weapon (which is nice, but you’d really like that new thrown weapon with all the crit and haste instead).

So adding that all up, you’ve got 80 from your legs, 64 from your super-expensive new shoes, 56 from the cloak, and 28 from the 1-tier-down thrown weapon. That’s barely enough to cap you, and that’s good. Of course it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg to get there.

As far as which tier piece to avoid, in order to make your life easier, it might be the chest, where you can get the excellent Shadow Seeker’s Tunic for emblems of frost, and that’ll get you 92 more expertise. It just means you need the other 4 tier pieces if you want your bonus, but it gives you some more play, since with just the tunic, legs, and cloak, you’ll be capped.

Or you can run with Victor’s Call, which unfortunately is what I’m doing now, but with the new trinkets coming into play, you’d really really rather not.

are they doing that on purpose? Is there some sort of mechanic change coming in the new xpac that would explain this lack of Expertise? Hit cap will be less of a problem, but I sure do hate gemming to meet a cap. Balancing gear stats is always a challenge for us.

Very nice write-up. I too am a bit concerned with the lack of +hit and +expertise found on the gear, but I guess with the right itemization it can be circumvented. Thank God I didn’t get rid of my Twilight Assassin belt… item level 226, uhhg.

Remember that this is just the 5-man. This is a lot like the ToC 5-man. The loot is a lot better than the older heroics, but I don’t think its meant to replace all of the raid loot that you’ve accumulated. So expect to have to mix-an-match gear to get the stats that you want, until you go to the ICC raids for upgrades.